The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government Paperback – September 13, 2016

This is a book worth your time, written by a retired career Congressional staff insider. Author Mike Lofgren has unique and critical insight into the workings of both the Republican Party and the Congress. And his take on both are depressing, bordering on frightening. He takes no prisoners with harsh judgement of the GOP, the Democrats, and corporate America. According to him, the Republicans are essentially shills for big business and the Democrats are just plain hapless.In a nutshell, the Deep State as Lofgren describes it is a combination of elected and appointed members of the legislative and executive branches; and corporate insiders, especially the military-industrial complex, Wall Street, and Silicon Valley. Together, fueled by enormous amounts of money, they effectively control the country, regardless of which party is in power or the wishes of the electorate. Lofgren believes the ‘Deep State’ in its current form began with the Manhattan Project during WW II. He describes the country’s situation in detail with specific examples. He points out the main dangers the country faces due to the Deep State, and finally, he lays out specific corrections he believes the country must take to save itself.Readers will have widely different views about Lofgren's thesis based on their perspective. I have a few observations. First, I think he's mostly right. But I wonder why he played the game for so long and only vents his concerns after retirement. He could be viewed as quite hypocritical. At times, his rhetoric is quite shrill (over the top). Also, although the 'Deep State' might be reaching new heights of control and manipulation, I do not think this is a very new phenomenon. Think about the Railroad Barons of the 19th century and many other examples. People with vast resources have always wielded great power for possible mischief. That's not to say we should not heed Lofgren's warning and strive to retake our democracy.Mike Lofgren says the worst and most vexing problem we face is money in politics and the ills exacerbated by the ‘Citizens Untited’ Supreme Court decision. He’s exactly right. His suggested solutions, while mostly right on target, are daunting. In the current state, its difficult to see how we get there.This is a book that should cause people to think and act. I highly recommend it.

An outstanding and insightful analysis of the pathetic dysfunctional partisan and gridlock government of the United States! I had previously read Prof. Wolin’s “Democracy, Inc.” in the past with his revelation of the “Inverted Totalitarianism” which has captured the institutions of power and governance in this country. Mike Lofgren provides an updated and specific discussion of the criminal and corrupt fascist state which is only masquerading as a democracy, i.e. 1%, Citizen’s United, corporate offshore inversion tax avoidance, and AIPAC/Israel to mention just a few issues. The author reveals that the U.S. is truly and increasingly becoming an outlier in comparison with other advanced societies in regard to women’s rights, health issues and numerous other human dimensions. While reading, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the idiocy, incompetence, corruption and criminality revealed! As an aside, the “Secret State” is a 2012 British fictional political thriller revealing similar U.K. criminal and corrupt relationship between the government, military and business resulting in the U.K. going to war based on misinformation and lies, sound familiar? However, the Deep State is a stark reality which is really frightening and foreboding!

An important book with a number of incisive observations. I cannot do it justice in a few paragraphs, but here are a few examples.>> all political ideologies as mental and emotional crutches, or substitute religions: for leaders, a means of manipulating attitudes and behaviors; for the rank and file, a lazy surrogate for problem solving <<>> the judicial travesty known as the Citizens United decision <<The decision [money = free speech] is legally absurd. It will have devastating political consequences as it officially codifies America as a hereditary plutocracy.>> “revolution within the form.” Our venerable institutions of government have outwardly remained the same , but they have grown more and more resistant to the popular will as they have become hardwired into a corporate and private influence network with almost unlimited cash to enforce its will. <<The Roman Republic perished the same way. It morphed into an empire with its outward form unchanged. Eventually the empire perished too.>> de facto oligarchy camouflaged by two-party competition within the outward form of constitutional government. <<>> Federal regulators could seize the bank and operate it as a conservator in the same way that the FDIC has done in hundreds of instances over many decades. Innocent stakeholders, whether low-level employees, shareholders, or depositors, would be protected. Holder’s fearmongering about the risk of endangering the world economy has no basis. <<This paradigm should have been applied to the entire TARP program.>> Albright was continually pressuring the CIA to find whatever evidence of Serbian perfidy was necessary to justify NATO military intervention. … The trumped-up evidence of Saddam Hussein’s purported weapons of mass destruction was not the first instance of cooked intelligence, nor is it likely to be the last. <<>> The national security sector of the Deep State achieved a zenith of incoherence in June 2014 … the United States government would be giving lethal support to Syrian rebels, the most effective military element of which was ISIS – a group we were bombing just across the border in Iraq. <<>> We were lucky that the cold war ended without the nuclear trigger being pulled, but that does not ensure that our luck will always hold should there be a new cold war. <<>> As seen through the lens of Washington, other countries are not permitted to pursue their own conceptions of their legitimate national interest. Any foreign action perceived to conflict with America’s grandiose conception of its destiny is automatically deemed hostile. <<Strangely though the author does not find Russia’s self-defense legitimate even when its very survival is at stake. The neocons wanted to totally destroy Russia [Dick Cheney so stated], and the destabilization of Ukraine was a means to that end. Washington wanted to place nuclear missiles and radar stations in Crimea. Even though the author knows how the establishment operates he does not seem to grasp that they control the media, they determine the agenda, they support their candidates, demonize foreign leaders, generate fake news and create virtual reality. So for the author Putin is a villain. It was on TV so it must be true!The author is also confused about the Vietnam war. It was certainly tragic that the U.S. failed to enforce the Paris Agreement with air power because the Congress suddenly cut funding. As a result Viet Cong and Khmer Rouge took over Indochina, and subsequently murdered 1 million people. Can you imagine the horror the victims went through? The reason it happened is that people think in cliches! Not all the wars the U.S. fought were illegitimate. Most of those that were happened AFTER the cold war.

Having read hundreds of political books, I found this to be by far one of the most incisive and useful of any other there. My only wish is that an updated version could be written ... I can only imagine what the author is thinking of how the trends he discusses have continued to play out.Book is still as relevant today as when written, even more so.Cannot recommend highly enough.